Why You Can’t Go Parallel with Barbell Squats or Bodyweight

Many things have been blamed for not being able to go parallel with squats (free barbell or bodyweight), and often, the most likely culprit gets overlooked. I’m a certified personal trainer.

If you struggle to reach parallel with free barbell or bodyweight squats, you may want to take a look at the length of your thigh relative to your shin. Are you “long thighed” or “short thighed”?

This relativity factor is NOT related to overall body height. If when you wear shorts, you’re “all thighs,” chances are you have the so-called long femur. A femur that seems too long for the shin is very likely longer than your torso, and therein lies the problem.

When it comes to barbell or bodyweight squats, a long femur (thigh bone) is a biomechanical disadvantage, especially when paired with a short torso.

In fact, regardless of a person’s height or relative shin length, if their femurs are longer than their torso, this puts them at a disadvantage in the squat.

Many other variables have been blamed on being unable to go parallel with the squat, such as lack of flexibility in the ankles and hips; weak anterior tibialis muscle (muscle in front of calve); stiff lower back; tight calves and poor form. Though these are all legitimate reasons for difficulty in parallel squatting, they can also be corrected.

If your femurs are relatively long compared to your shins, coupled with a torso shorter than the femurs, you’re in big trouble.

To better understand why the “long femur” is a curse with squatting, mentally envision someone’s profile with extremely exaggerated features: super super long thighs, very short shins, short torso. Imagine the profile standing straight, then lowering into a squat.

As they lower, with their super long femurs, what happens to their hips? Their hips end up way out behind them, far from their knees; center of gravity is way behind them. This pulls them backwards long before they can get parallel.

To counteract this, what must they do? They must lean their torso very far forward, so far forward that they can lose the arch in their lower back that they’re supposed to have when doing the squat. The back is rounded, chest down. They aren’t in a squat; they are in a crouch.

To keep from falling backwards in the barbell squat when parallel, you must have the barbell positioned right over your ankles/midfoot.

To achieve this, the long-femur trainee must really pitch forward to get that barbell over the ankle. This forces the lower back muscles to absorb considerable tension, increasing injury risk to the lower back and subtracting workload from the quadriceps and glutes.

If a person has great flexibility at the junction of the shin and foot, as well as Achilles tendon flexibility, they could move their knees far ahead of their feet (increase bend in foot/shin junction), which would bring their hips (center of gravity) forward, to get the barbell over the ankles/midfoot. This would enable him to keep balance without leaning his torso over so much.

However, there are several problems here: 1) The shin/foot/Achilles flexibility needs to be developed and may never be enough, 2) The knees being so far ahead of the feet puts the trainee in an inefficient position to handle heavy weight, since workload is shifted away from the butt and hamstrings and concentrated too much on the quadriceps, and 3) This positioning puts undue stress on the knees.

The inability to get the feet flat on the floor while in a parallel squat is typically blamed on “poor ankle flexibility.” Check your femur-to-shin proportion; chances are extremely high that this is the problem with parallel squat difficulty.

Now, imagine someone with very short femurs and crazy long shins; exaggerate these features in your mind as you mentally illustrate the profile. This person lowers into a squat.

Note how close their hips are to their knees while their thighs are parallel. With their very long torso, note that they hardly have to lean forward to get the barbell over the midpoint of their feet.

The angle that’s created by their torso with their thighs is significantly bigger than the angle created by the long-femur, short-torso counterpart.

If the second trainee’s spine is long enough and femurs short enough, their back will be practically upright while they are parallel in their squat.

Though I just had you imagine very exaggerated features, in real life, just a few inches’ deviation are all that’s necessary to make it impossible to do a parallel squat without struggling to prevent a severe forward lean.

This is clearly demonstrated when the long-femur trainee places their heels on a two-inch high block of wood, then finds he can go down to parallel without a problem. Sometimes even one inch is all it takes.

In short (no pun intended), the long femur is a curse for the squat exercise. View videos of people squatting very heavy and especially going deep, and you’ll note that many have noticeably short thighs relative to their shin length.

Few will have relatively long femurs, and when they do, their torso lean is virtually parallel (e.g., champion Steve Goggins).

On the plus side, the long femur is considered a godsend in the world of competitive cycling.

Source: Steve Goggins video:

bing.com/videos/search?q=steve+goggins&view;=detail∣=FC2866061E02133D1943FC2866061E02133D1943&first;=0